I’m so bored that the dozens of pictures that I took over the last month or so are languishing on my hard drive, unlikely to ever see the light of day. And the July clear-out post of pictures, scheduled to drop, eventually, is probably going to be deleted, as there’s nothing really new in them.
The most exciting thing I’ve made since my last post (NOT yesterday’s Italian bread post) is a batch of baked beef meatballs which I combined with jarred mushroom spaghetti sauce and rotini pasta for today’s supper. I toasted a couple of slices of the bread for garlic bread.
A few days ago I thawed the last of the hamantaschen pastry from Christmas. Today, I rolled out the pastry, cut out 2 inch circles and shaped them into a sort of ‘bow-tie’ cookie filled with mincemeat, also leftover from Christmas. Tasty but otherwise … meh.
In a recent ‘conversation through blog comments’ with a blogging friend I mentioned my last culinary shopping splurge, at the local LCBO … a bottle of Niagara Pinot Grigio and a bottle of sake. The Pinot was slated for risotto and/or mussels in a white wine and tomato sauce, and the sake was supposed to be paired with something sushi related. It didn’t happen. In the middle is a bottle of Polish made mead in a ceramic bottle gifted to me by my nephew. I’ll have to do something creative with it, one of these days.
And that’s about it, folks.
Cooking is Fun ... Really!! 
Now I can see that it says The Original Honey Drink on that bottle, but the website calls it a beer, so which is it? Our local wine store offers Celtic Honey Mead which is a cordial, as it should be, the same as the old Russian “medovukha.”
The web site is a ‘beer’ rating site. It’s a honey mead. I also have a bottle of cranberry mead in my pantry which I’ve used to poach fruit like pears.
I didn’t even know it existed, other than in history books. You’ve prompted me to start looking for it. I poach pears in Cointreau or Frangelico, whatever happens to be at hand, but now I want to try mead.
Here’s the original cranberry mead that informed me about mead. I used the flavours of that bottle to make the poaching liquid for the pears. And then used the poaching liquid itself in drinks.
https://a-boleyn.livejournal.com/121322.html
Since mead is fermented honey, diluted by water a bit,and I usually have tons of honey left after High Holidays, I’ll give your recipe a try, minus the cranberries. If it works, it’ll be great for baing as well.
The honey and the alcohol content gives mead poached fruit their unique flavour. I was too frugal to use the sipping mead for poaching which is what led me to making the substitution. 🙂
Melomel is the name for the category of fruit flavoured meads. A ‘local’ winery made the one that I have. I found the link below fascinating (not that I ever intended to brew my own) esp the mead made with rose petals called ‘metheglin’. The one with rosehips is called ‘rhodomel’.
https://www.winning-homebrew.com/melomels.html
PS: baing?
I am astonished, and I thank you! Berry-flavored meads are mentioned in Russian history, being especially favored during Ivan the Terrible times, but I want to start with a plain one, to master the procedure.
Lovely dinner idea. Thanks for sharing 🙂 I made an amazing traditional polish yeast cake that I highly recommend trying